GRAND PRAIRIE, Texas – Donoharm will be looking to start a new win streak on Saturday in the Grade 3, $200,000 Texas Mile at Lone Star Park. He is part of an anticipated cast of six to eight older horses for the race that serves as the first major stakes of the meet. Others expected include Get in Da House, Isn’t He Clever, Majestic Harbor, and Master Rick. The list of possible starters includes Warren’s Knockout.
Fort Larned, the reigning Breeders’ Cup Classic winner, worked four furlongs in 48.80 seconds at Churchill Downs on Tuesday, his first breeze since finishing a disappointing fifth as the odds-on favorite in the Grade 2 Oaklawn Handicap on April 13. He galloped out five-eighths in 1:01.80.
The Oaklawn Handicap was the second disappointing outing in a row for Fort Larned, who stumbled and lost rider Brian Hernandez Jr. immediately after the start of the Grade 2 Gulfstream Park Handicap five weeks earlier.
INGLEWOOD, Calif. – The 2013 spring meet begins Thursday at Betfair Hollywood Park, where picking winners is easier than predicting the future of the racetrack.
Despite increasing likelihood the 75th anniversary season will be the final spring at Hollywood, racing secretary Martin Panza does not look beyond the current calendar. Is this the last hurrah for Hollywood?
“It is not for me to say,” Panza said. “Until they tell me we’re closing, we keep going along. Certainly, there is a lot of chatter that way.”
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Judy the Beauty nearly was ready to run last fall in the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint, but a mid-October workout at Hollywood Park dashed those hopes.
“She bled [internally] that morning,” said Wesley Ward, who owns and trains the speedy chestnut filly. “She’d never bled a drop before that. That was the end of her Breeders’ Cup.”
Making official what had long been suspected, trainer Bob Baffert on Tuesday told Churchill Downs’s publicity department that both Super Ninety Nine and Den’s Legacy, who had been ranked 18th and 20th, respectively, on the points list for the May 4 Kentucky Derby, would not run.
Though both 3-year-olds were among the top 20 in points, they had not been listed in Daily Racing Form’s Derby Watch top 20, owing to the likelihood they were not going to compete.
The official final time of last Saturday night’s $1.5 million Charles Town Classic – won by Game On Dude – has been changed to 1:49.93, which is 2.34 seconds faster than what was originally posted.
The final time, as well as the internal fractions, were changed following inquiries by several parties and a review by Charles Town officials, the track’s board of stewards, and Equibase. The new final time was hand-timed off a replay.
Teddy’s Promise, the winner of two graded stakes for female sprinters in the last 18 months, will start in Saturday’s $125,000 B. Thoughtful Stakes on the California Gold Rush program at Hollywood Park.
Trainer Ron Ellis said owners Ted and Judy Nichols considered sending Teddy’s Promise to the $300,000 Humana Distaff at Churchill Downs on May 4 but have opted to stay home.
Thirty-seven races, all on turf, over six racing days. Welcome back to the itty bitty Atlantic City race meet.
Atlantic City Race Course is scheduled to open Thursday, with the first of four consecutive all-turf cards. The track will take a one-day break before returning for two more days of racing, closing on May 1.
First post each day is 3:30 p.m. Eastern, allowing area job-holders to sneak out a little early if they’re interested in live-racing action. The track will once again offer free admission and free parking on race days.
Sacred Ovation had been with Art Sherman’s stable briefly in February when the trainer began to think he found a bargain with the $16,000 claimer.
“I told the owners when I started training him that he could run a little bit,” Sherman said.
Sacred Ovation was second by a nose in an optional claimer in his first start for Sherman, on the hillside turf course at Santa Anita on April 4. He earned $11,600 from that race.
LEXINGTON, Ky. – Understated Englishman that he is, Jonathan Sheppard admitted to being “delighted” a couple of days after he sent out a filly named Gathering to win her North American debut on opening weekend of the Keeneland spring meet.
